The reading of electricity meters has been traditionally accomplished by human meter readers who traveled to the sites and manually read each electricity meter. Traditional electricity meters have not contained any means for remotely disconnecting the service.
More recently, many utilities have begun installing smart electricity meters that have the ability to communicate bi-directionally between the meter and a utility data center. This provides the ability to remotely read the meter. In addition, many of these “smart” meters have an internal service disconnect switch that can be used to disconnect, limit or reconnect the customer's load from a remote location, via a control signal sent by a communications network. The remote disconnection may be accomplished when customers are delinquent or when tenants change in apartments (e.g., in apartments), for example.
Although such remote connection and disconnection offers advantages, in certain circumstances, reconnection can be problematic. Accordingly, smart meters that alleviate problems associated with certain reconnection conditions are sought after.